MICHAEL HOLLEY

Show and tell

Extravaganza gets kicked off with Media Day

1/30/2002

EW ORLEANS - In this place, Bill Belichick is asked about professional quarterbacks and hip-hop icons. This is where Adam Vinatieri is asked a question in Spanish, a language he doesn't speak. This is where Marshall Faulk confesses about his vendor days and where Mike Martz reflects on the Civil War.

This is the NFL's version of a Super Bowl buffet line. Reporters, photographers, and some mysterious guy with a disposable Kodak go station to station, visiting with various Patriots and Rams. For one hourapiece, the teams are required to stay in the Superdome and listen to questions they rarely hear in their normal media sessions.

Belichick has been asked about his Tom Brady/Drew Bledsoe decision hundreds of times, but how many times has he been asked to name his preferred rapper? That happened yesterday when a reporter became bored with what now has become a national quarterbacks obsession.

''Biggie or Tupac?'' she asked Belichick.

He didn't answer.

Vinatieri was asked to name his favorite Teletubby.

He wasn't familiar with their work.

Troy Brown was asked about working in a South Carolina watermelon patch. Martz was asked if he thought Saints coach Jim Haslett was mad at him. Martz and Haslett aren't pals, and here is Martz using the Saints' - and Haslett's - practice facility for the week. A reporter wanted to know if Martz found that odd.

''Not really,'' he said.

''You're just not going to play along, are you?'' the frustrated reporter said before walking away.

After you attend one of these hourlong tell-alls, you begin to understand what players and coaches mean by Super Bowl distractions. One of Belichick's smartest moves of the year was telling his assistant coaches to stay in Foxborough Monday and part of yesterday so they could work on the game plan. They were much better off there than here, not that this is a bad place. The problem is that the atmosphere has very little to do with football.

Events like yesterday's are the kickoff to a week that tests a player's discipline more than he has ever imagined. There are cameras. There are parties. There are old friends who would like to socialize, and there are new friends who would like to get to know you a little better.

U2 will be in town, as will Mariah Carey, Paul McCartney, and Mary J. Blige. Trouble has its own condo in the French Quarter, and there is always someone asking for just 15 minutes of your time.

For five more days, this city is Temptation Island. If any player makes a mistake during the week, he will find that all the world is a sports page, waiting to tell his story. When all Super Bowl coaches dream, the only absurdity they see surrounding their players is that of Media Day. The controlled chaos is better than the alternative.

As silly as Media Day can be, it has its advantages. Of all people, Belichick has become a media favorite lately. The photographers are catching more and more shots of him smiling, and reporters are finding that the coach can be witty and anecdotal when trying to make a point.

The book on Belichick was that he wouldn't share the time if a reporter asked, but now he is flat-out insightful when presented with questions. He was asked about Martz yesterday and compared the coach to Tom Landry, Bill Walsh, and Joe Gibbs.

''He gives you a lot of problems,'' Belichick said. ''You come out of the game, or even at halftime, and you know what he's going after. You know where he sees your weaknesses and you're sitting there trying to plug it up. And then after you get that fixed, you go another series and you see where Mike has already moved on. He sees where you tried to support that area and now he's on to the other area that you've weakened in order to compensate.''

After the Rams beat the Patriots in November, Belichick said he told Martz something that ''I may regret doing now.'' He told Martz that the Rams gave his team fits, and that Martz's game plan was excellent.

Those gems were hard to come by yesterday. For most of the day there were players interviewing each other. There were players from other teams (the Eagles' Donovan McNabb, the Saints' Aaron Brooks) stopping in to say hello. There were lots and lots of weird questions.

But then, who am I to be presumptuous? With the way this season has gone for the Patriots, they'll win the Super Bowl. After the game, Belichick will tell us all that, of course, he's a Biggie fan.

Michael Holley is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is holley@globe.com.